Tēnā koe Jan Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-000147 Thank you for your request of 04 June 2019, asking for the following information under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act):

…the number of cover applications for WRGPI by chemical poisoning suffered by people employed as painters along with those diagnoses of white matter degeneration caused by same. We would like this for the period between 2010 and the current date please

Diagnosis of white matter degeneration None of the 27 injury claims identified as being relevant to your request have an injury diagnosis of ‘white matter degeneration’ or similar. We can confirm that the two most common injury diagnosis for these claims was ‘accidental poisoning by lead paints’ (15 claims) and ‘other solvents causing toxic effect’ (four claims). The following notes should be considered when interpreting the data provided The data has been extracted for claims where the following applies:
• The claim was lodged between 1 January 2010 and 31 May 2019. • The claim is for a work-related injury. • The claim is identified as a poisoning/toxicity related injury, and has the gradual process claim
indicator in ACC’s claims management system, EOS.
• The client’s occupation is recorded as ‘painters and paperhangers’ or the employer the claim is
associated to has business activity ‘painters and paperhangers’. ACC takes privacy seriously ACC does not routinely disclose low value numbers. Accordingly, some entries in the tables provided only indicate that the number is fewer than four (denoted as <4). This limits the potential for individuals, or matters specific to certain individuals, from being identified. Withholding in this way is necessary to protect the privacy of these individuals under section 9(2)(a) of the Act. In doing so, we have considered the public interest in making the information available and have determined that it does not outweigh the need to protect the privacy of these persons. Tables 1 and 2 Table 1 provides a count of work-related gradual process injuries lodged by painters since January 2010, by year of lodgment. Table 2 provides a breakdown of the claim decisions, by accepted and declined. We have not provided the claim decision by year, as a significant number of values are fewer than four and would need to be suppressed. The data has been provided by calendar year the claims were lodged. The data was extracted on 12 June 2019 and may differ if re-run at a later date.

ACC is happy to answer your questions If you have any questions, you can email me at [email address].

If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman. Information about how to do this is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by phoning 0800 802 602.